Westminster Positioning Systems

Westminster Council doesn’t half like its gizmos. Last year we reported on the advent of SatLav, an SMS service wherein your text of ‘toilet’ to 80097 got you a list of your nearest Westminster based conveniences. Using G-Pee-S technology, of course. Now the resourceful burghers are branching out and offering similar services for the nearest car parks, libraries and youth clubs (although we don’t actually think that there are many teens who would knowingly seek out such institutions). So far so waste-of-taxpayers’-money.

But the real worry behind this development, and indeed the silly signalling story upon which we reported earlier on today, is the fact that we are becoming utterly incapable of finding anything without help from via above. Call us old-fashioned, but we do rather lament the fact that maps are going out of fashion, and that asking for directions has become such an unthinkable course of action. Modern London life really needs to be fitted with brakes and a manual override button.